JCPS-00502; No. of pages: 10; 4C:
Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
ScienceDirect
Journal of Consumer Psychology xx, x (2015) xxx – xxx
Research Article
To do or to have, now or later? The preferred consumption profiles of
material and experiential purchases
Amit Kumar, Thomas Gilovich ⁎
Cornell University, USA
Received 15 July 2014; received in revised form 23 June 2015; accepted 26 June 2015
Available online xxxx
Abstract
Extending previous research on the hedonic benefits of spending money on doing rather than having, this paper investigates when people prefer
to consume experiential and material purchases. We contend that the preferred timing of consumption tends to be more immediate for things
(like clothing and gadgets) than for experiences (like vacations and meals out). First, we examine whether consumers exhibit a stronger preference
to delay consumption of experiential purchases compared to material goods. When asked to make choices about their optimal consumption times,
people exhibit a relative preference to have now and do later. In the next set of studies, we found that this difference in preferred consumption led
participants to opt for a lesser material item now over a superior item later, but to wait for a superior experiential purchase rather than settle for a
lesser experience now. This tendency is due to the fact that consumers derive more utility from waiting for experiences than from waiting for
possessions. Finally, we provide evidence that these preferences affect people's real-world decisions about when to consume.
© 2015 Society for Consumer Psychology. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Experiential purchases; Materialism; Waiting; Anticipation; Intertemporal choice
Introduction
Nearly everyone has limited discretionary income and so it
is important that consumers know how to spend their money in
the most beneficial ways. Recent research on this issue has
focused on what they might be advised to purchase to increase
their hedonic welfare (Dunn, Gilbert, & Wilson, 2011; Dunn &
Norton, 2013; Gilovich & Kumar, 2015; Gilovich, Kumar, &
Jampol, 2015a, 2015b; Van Boven & Gilovich, 2003). In this
paper, we examine when people prefer to spend it, and how
those preferences change depending on what they are buying.
Although it is known that a trip to Paris or meal at Daniel is
likely to bring about more happiness than a new wristwatch or a
⁎ Corresponding author at: Department of Psychology, Cornell University, Ithaca,
NY 14853-7601, USA. Tel.: +1 607 255 6432.
E-mail address: [email protected] (T. Gilovich).
set of rims for one's Mercedes (Van Boven & Gilovich, 2003),
might even more satisfaction be derived when the vacation or
dining experience is consumed not now, but later?
A substantial amount of research in psychology and economics
indicates that people have a general preference to consume now
rather than later, a preference so pronounced that quite a bit of
research has been devoted to finding ways to encourage people to
delay gratification (Duckworth & Seligman, 2005; Loewenstein &
Prelec, 1992; McClure, Laibson, Loewenstein, & Cohen, 2004;
Mischel, 1974). At the same time, Loewenstein (1987) provided
evidence that people sometimes prefer to delay consumption, so
they can savor an experience that will be consumed in the future.
Closing our eyes and envisioning endless possibilities for how
things might turn out is itself a pleasurable experience, sometimes
more rewarding than the here-and-now of the actual experience
itself. Loewenstein maintains that the desire to savor and put off
consumption is especially likely when the consumption is fleeting:
because the satisfaction that such consumption provides is only
temporary, a prior period of savoring allows people to increase
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jcps.2015.06.013
1057-7408© 2015 Society for Consumer Psychology. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Please cite this article as: Kumar, A., & Gilovich, T., To do or to have, now or later? The preferred consumption profiles of material and experiential purchases, Journal
of Consumer Psychology (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jcps.2015.06.013
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A. Kumar, T. Gilovich / Journal of Consumer Psychology xx, x (2015) xxx–xxx
their hedonic return. Indeed, in the marketing literature as well,
though a number of studies have found that customers do not like
waiting (e.g., Hoch & Loewenstein, 1991; Houston, Bettencourt,
& Wenger, 1988; Taylor, 1994), some researchers have argued
that waiting can be positive (e.g., Nowlis, Mandel, & McCabe,
2004). For example, in line with Loewenstein's (1987) theorizing,
waiting for a consumer purchase is more likely to increase utility
when one is anticipating pleasant rather than unpleasant
consumption (Nowlis et al., 2004).
The work on savoring and delayed consumption led to a recent
exploration of how the experience of waiting might be different
for two different types of consumption (Kumar, Killingsworth, &
Gilovich, 2014). This work investigated how the experience of
waiting differs for experiential and material purchases — that is,
money spent on doing (e.g. vacations, concerts, sporting events,
meals out) versus money spent on having (e.g. clothing, gadgets,
jewelry, furniture). A growing body of literature has found that
experiential purchases tend to bring about more enduring
happiness than material possessions (Caprariello & Reis, 2013;
Carter & Gilovich, 2010, 2012, 2014; Gilovich & Kumar, 2015;
Gilovich et al., 2015a, 2015b; Howell & Hill, 2009; Kumar &
Gilovich, in press; Nicolao, Irwin, & Goodman, 2009; Van
Boven & Gilovich, 2003). This difference in consumer
satisfaction is the result of several psychological processes:
experiential purchases are less subject to invidious comparisons
(Carter & Gilovich, 2010), are more central to a person's sense of
self (Carter & Gilovich, 2012), are typically more social in nature
(Caprariello & Reis, 2013; Kumar, Mann, & Gilovich, in
preparation), and tend to be talked about more with other people
(Kumar & Gilovich, in press).
Although nearly all of the existing research on people's
enjoyment of material and experiential purchases has dealt
solely with the hedonic return that comes after consumption,
Kumar et al. (2014) found that there is a difference in the value
derived from material and experiential purchases even before
the good is acquired or the experience attained. In one study,
they found that when participants were asked to think about a
purchase they intended to make in the near future, their
anticipation tended to be more pleasant, more exciting, and less
fraught with impatience for experiential purchases than for
material purchases. This finding was replicated in a large-scale
experience sampling study: Participants who were “caught in
the act” of thinking about future experiential consumption
reported being happier, more excited, and less impatient than
those thinking about future materialistic consumption. Finally,
an archival analysis of news stories about people waiting in
long lines found that those waiting for an experience (e.g., for
the opening of a food truck) tended to be in a better mood, and
better behaved, than those waiting for a possession (e.g., for the
doors to open on Black Friday). There are times, then, when
waiting is part of the fun, and that seems to be the case
significantly more often for experiential purchases than for
material purchases.
In his seminal paper, Loewenstein (1987) maintained that
the value people get from anticipation can lead them to delay
consumption. For instance, in the signature finding from that
work, people said they would prefer to receive a kiss from their
favorite movie star three days in the future rather than right
away. Accordingly, we sought to extend the findings from
Kumar et al. (2014) by looking into whether, as a result of the
difference in the pleasure associated with waiting, people might
prefer to delay their consumption of experiential purchases,
while preferring to consume material purchases immediately.
Indeed, people seem to enjoy planning their vacations as much
or more than actually going on them. In one study, vacationers
were happier in the weeks leading up to a vacation than the
weeks that followed, suggesting that they didn't get much of
a hedonic boost, or much of an enduring boost, from
the vacation itself (Nawijn, Marchand, Veenhoven, &
Vingerhoets, 2010). Thus, one way people may seek to
boost the happiness they get from their experiential
purchases is to delay their consumption.
Of course, people might delay the consumption of experiences
for a psychologically uninteresting reason: because they are often
over quickly and the only way to stretch out their enjoyment is to
put off when they begin. Material purchases, in contrast, can
usually be enjoyed now and down the road. Although this
difference doubtless accounts for part of the phenomenon we
explore here, it is not the whole story, as we show in three ways
below. First, we had participants in some studies tell us when they
would like to consume experiential purchases that have the same
still-available-for-further-consumption property as most material
goods. Second, we had participants express their temporal
preferences for experiential purchases relative to material
possessions that were also time-limited, just like most experiences. Finally, we had participants in one study specify when
they would most like to make the same purchase—a trip to New
York City—that they were led to construe in more material or
experiential terms. By holding the broad nature of the purchase
constant, we were able to rule out the possibility that people
prefer to delay their acquisition of experiences more than material
goods simply because the latter are more available for later
consumption than the former.
In their initial work on the topic, Van Boven and Gilovich
(2003) asked a simple question: “To Do or To Have?” When it
comes to happiness and consumer satisfaction, their answer was
clear—the hedonic return tends to be greater for experiential
purchases than for material purchases. Here we ask an important
follow-up question: When? To that end, we first show in Studies
1a through 1c that when asked to choose between an experience
and a possession at different times, people show a marked
preference for consuming the material purchase now and the
experiential purchase later. We then extend these findings in
Study 2a using a different paradigm in which participants simply
state their preferred time of consumption of a variety of different
purchases. Study 2b replicates this result using a material
purchase and an experiential purchase that can be (in equal
measure) consumed repeatedly. Next, participants in Studies
3a–3c were presented with a choice between a lesser purchase
now and a superior purchase later on and we examined whether
they were more likely to choose lesser material possessions
now but opt to wait to consume the superior experiential
purchases later. Study 3b demonstrates that this preference can
be traced to the tendency of consumers to get more utility from
Please cite this article as: Kumar, A., & Gilovich, T., To do or to have, now or later? The preferred consumption profiles of material and experiential purchases, Journal
of Consumer Psychology (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jcps.2015.06.013
A. Kumar, T. Gilovich / Journal of Consumer Psychology xx, x (2015) xxx–xxx
waiting for experiential purchases than from waiting to acquire
material goods. Finally, we investigate whether people's real-world
consumption decisions conform to this pattern (Study 4).
Experiments 1a–1c
Because people consume anticipation and get more utility
from waiting for experiences than waiting for possessions
(Kumar & Gilovich, in press; Kumar et al., 2014; Loewenstein,
1987), we examined whether people are more inclined to delay
the consumption of experiences than the consumption of
material goods. More specifically, would people prefer to have
a possession now and an experience later, or an experience
now and a possession later? We presented participants in Study
1a with just such a choice as an initial assessment of whether
people would rather delay their consumption of experiences
than delay their consumption of material purchases. But as we
noted earlier, there is a powerful, banal reason to be more
inclined to put off the consumption of an experience than a
material possession: most experiences are “time limited” but
most material goods are not. To deal with this concern, we
conducted two follow-up replications (Studies 1b and 1c)
using an experiential and material purchase that were matched
on the degree to which they were time limited.
Method
Participants
Ninety-seven students and affiliates at Cornell university
(45 female; Mage = 21.24, SD = 3.71) served as participants in
Study 1a and 99 (different) students from the same university
served as participants in Study 1b (58 female; Mage = 19.91,
SD = 2.51). Both samples were recruited at various locations
around campus and asked to volunteer their time. One hundred
U.S. respondents (38 female; Mage = 29.83, SD = 8.60) from
Amazon's Mechanical Turk participated in Study 1c in
exchange for modest compensation.
Procedure
Participants in Study 1a were told to imagine that they were
given $1500 to spend on two purchases: an electronic gadget
that cost $750 and an all-expenses-paid beach vacation that
also cost $750. It is worth noting that in addition to being
matched on price, these two broad categories have been shown
in previous research (Kumar & Gilovich, in press) to be
comparable in subjective appeal. That is, 40 raters in a separate
investigation (from the same participant pool) confirmed that
vacations and electronic goods are seen as roughly equally
attractive. They were asked to imagine that they had a sum of
money to spend on a gadget or a beach vacation and asked to
rate on a scale from 1 (not at all appealing) to 7 (very
appealing) how appealing such a purchase seemed to them.
Electronic goods (M = 5.60, SD = 1.82) and beach vacations
(M = 4.85, SD = 1.53) did not differ in appeal, t(38) = 1.41,
p = 0.17. This is especially likely to be true when they cost
exactly the same amount, as they do in the current investigation.
3
They were then told to imagine further that they were given
this money with one stipulation: one purchase had to be made
within the week, and the other purchase had to be made at least
one month from now. Participants were then asked to choose
which purchase they wanted now and which one they wanted
later. They then provided their age and gender. For this and all
studies reported below, we have reported all conditions and
analyzed all dependent measures, and no data were excluded
from any of our analyses.
In Study 1b, participants were asked to imagine that they were
given enough money to make two purchases: an electronic gadget
and a lifetime membership at a local museum. They were told to
assume that these two purchases cost exactly the same amount.
They were then asked to indicate which purchase they'd rather
have now and which they'd rather have in the future.
Participants in Study 1c were also asked to imagine that they
were given enough money to make two different purchases: an
experiential purchase and a material purchase that they could
only use for a limited amount of time. The experiential
purchase was an outdoor activity that one pays for (e.g. rafting,
skydiving). The material purchase was a “loaner” pair of
Google Glass that they could use for two weeks. They were told
that they wouldn't get to keep the new gadget indefinitely, but
would get to try it out for a limited time. They, too, were told to
assume that the two purchases cost exactly the same amount
and were then asked to indicate which purchase they'd rather
make immediately and which they'd rather make later.
Results
No significant main effects of age or gender, nor any
interactions with experimental condition, were found for any
of our dependent measures. These demographic variables are
therefore not discussed further.
Sixty-eight percent of the participants in Study 1a indicated
that they would rather have the gadget now and the vacation later.
This was statistically different from the 50/50 split expected
under the null hypothesis of indifference between the two
options, χ2 (1, N = 97) = 12.63, p b 0.001, ϕ = 0.36.
In Study 1b, 88.89% of the participants reported that they
would rather have the gadget now and the lifetime museum
membership later. This result was also significantly different
from the 50–50 indifference split, χ2 (1, N = 99) = 59.89,
p b 0.0001, ϕ = 0.78.
In Study 1c, 65.00% of the respondents said they would
rather have the gadget immediately and do the outdoor activity
later. This too was significantly different from a 50–50 split, χ2
(1, N = 100) = 9.00, p b 0.01, ϕ = 0.30.
Thus, when forced to choose, people prefer to have their
material purchases sooner and their experiential purchases later.
This was true, furthermore, even when the experiential purchase
(lifetime museum membership) could be experienced as far
into the future as the material purchase (electronic gadget) and
when the material purchase (a test pair of Google Glass) was
time-limited, as is typically the case with experiential purchases.
Even in situations in which the material good is finite and the
experience is durable, consumers seem to want to put off the
Please cite this article as: Kumar, A., & Gilovich, T., To do or to have, now or later? The preferred consumption profiles of material and experiential purchases, Journal
of Consumer Psychology (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jcps.2015.06.013
4
A. Kumar, T. Gilovich / Journal of Consumer Psychology xx, x (2015) xxx–xxx
consumption of experiences but have material possessions now,
supporting our thesis.
Experiments 2a and 2b
Given the preferences that the participants exhibited in Studies
1a through 1c, we conducted Studies 2a and 2b to further test
whether people prefer to delay consumption of experiential
purchases more than material purchases. Participants in Study
2a were provided with a variety of material and experiential
purchases and asked to indicate their ideal consumption time for
each. We predicted that people would state a preferred time of
consumption that was farther in the future for experiences than
for material goods. Study 2b was designed to examine whether
the results obtained in Study 2a might be an artifact of the fact that
experiential purchases tend to be time-limited but material goods
are not.
Method
Participants
Participants in Study 2a were 98 American adults (50 female;
Mage = 32.13, SD = 10.89) recruited via Amazon's Mechanical
Turk in return for a nominal payment. Those in Study 2b were
102 U.S. Mechanical Turk users (31 female; Mage = 29.08,
SD = 9.25) recruited in the same way as in Study 2a.
Procedure
Participants in both studies first read a brief statement about
how there are certain things people spend money on that they
want immediately and other things they'd rather wait and have
at some point in the future. Those in Study 2a were told they
would be presented with a number of purchases and asked to
imagine that they had the money to spend on each one, but that
they could decide when they'd want to consume the purchase in
question. Participants were then presented with 20 purchases,
ten experiential and ten material, in a different randomized
order for each participant. They indicated, for each purchase,
their preferred consumption time on a 5-point scale anchored at
1 (Immediately) and 5 (One year from now).
The ten experiential purchases were tickets to a sporting
event, a beach vacation, ski passes, a meal at a nice restaurant,
concert tickets, a trip to the zoo, movie tickets, fees for an
outdoor activity (e.g. hiking, rafting, skydiving), a cruise
package, and a trip to New York City. The ten material
purchases were a jacket, pair of jeans, shirt, television set,
stereo speakers, iPod, wristwatch, diamond necklace, designer
handbag, and laptop computer. These two sets of purchases
have been used in previous research, with the experiential
and material purchases matched in terms of subjective appeal
(Kumar & Gilovich, in press). More specifically, two
independent coders who were unaware of the purpose of the
experiment rated these twenty purchases both in terms of
appeal to them personally and likely appeal to the average
person on 5-point scales, where 1 represented “not very
appealing” and 5 represented “very appealing.” The material
(M = 3.80, SD = 0.63 for the first rating; M = 3.60, SD = 0.66
for the latter) and experiential (M = 3.85, SD = 1.16; M = 3.95,
SD = 0.60) purchases did not differ significantly on either rating
of subjective appeal, t's = 0.12 and 1.24, p's = 0.91 and 0.23.
Our results are therefore not an artifact of the set of experiential or
material purchases being higher in value or appeal.
Study 2b followed this basic set-up, but participants were
only presented with two purchases, rather than twenty. They
were told to imagine that they were thinking about buying a
new electronic gadget and a lifetime membership at a local
museum and that these purchases cost the same amount. They
were asked to assume they had the money to spend on both
purchases and to state their preference, using the same 5-point
scale used in Study 2a, for when they'd want the consumption
of that purchase to happen.
Results
Participants in Study 2a reported that they would want to delay
consumption of the experiential purchases (M = 3.31, SD =
0.72) longer than the material goods (M = 2.79 SD = 1.12),
matched pairs t(97) = 5.70, p b 0.0001, Cohen's d = 0.63. In
Study 2b, even when they were thinking about an experiential
purchase that could be used both now and in the future,
respondents indicated that would prefer to delay consumption
of the experiential purchase (M = 2.98, SD = 1.50) longer than
the material purchase (M = 1.80, SD = 1.09), matched pairs
t(101) = 6.39, p b 0.0001, Cohen's d = 0.64. These results
provide further evidence of a relative preference to delay the
consumption of experiences.
Experiment 3a
When deciding whether to make a purchase, we are often
forced to choose whether we want to consume now or wait until
something better comes along. Do we go ahead and order the
current model of a Smartphone, knowing that a newer, improved
model will be out shortly? What if we knew that we could have
a better experience in a few months than we could have
now—would we want to wait in that circumstance, or consume
more immediately? In Study 3a, participants were given an
intertemporal choice task in which they could opt for a more
modest version of a product/experience now or a better version
later on. We predicted that participants would exhibit more
patience for experiential purchases than material purchases. That
is, we hypothesized that they would prefer to wait for a better
experiential purchase, but would be more inclined to select the
“lesser” material purchase immediately.
Method
Participants
Ninety-five students at a large, private northeastern university
(46 female; Mage = 19.88, SD = 1.78) were recruited at various
locations around campus and asked to participate in a short study.
Please cite this article as: Kumar, A., & Gilovich, T., To do or to have, now or later? The preferred consumption profiles of material and experiential purchases, Journal
of Consumer Psychology (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jcps.2015.06.013
A. Kumar, T. Gilovich / Journal of Consumer Psychology xx, x (2015) xxx–xxx
Procedure
Participants were given a brief definition of either experiential or material purchases, as per Van Boven and Gilovich
(2003). Experiential purchases were defined as those “made
with the primary intention of acquiring a life experience: an
event or series of events that one lives through.” Material
purchases were defined as those “made with the primary
intention of acquiring a material good: a tangible object that
is kept in one's possession.” They were then asked to take a
moment to think about a purchase in the given category that
they intended to make in the near future and to indicate what
that purchase was. They were further asked to imagine that
6 months from now, for the very same price, they could get
an “upgraded” version of that purchase. Participants in both
conditions were given an example of what we meant by that
(e.g., “…if the experiential purchase you listed was ‘going on
a trip,’ imagine you knew that if you waited for six months,
the same amount of money would get you a much better
trip.”).
After receiving this information, they were asked to indicate
whether they would opt for the purchase they could make right
now or the “upgraded” purchase they could make six months
from now. Specifically, they rated their inclinations on a scale
from − 4 (Strongly prefer making the purchase now) to 4
(Strongly prefer the improved purchase later), with the mid-point
(0) representing indifference between the two options. Participants then indicated how much money they intended to spend on
the purchase in question.
Results
Participants reported planning to make a variety of experiential
(e.g., tickets to performances, trips) and material (e.g., clothing,
gadgets) purchases. Two participants did not report the cost of their
purchase, but responded to all other measures. Due to skewness
in the price data, we conducted inferential tests using the natural
log of the cost of each purchase, but report the untransformed
descriptive statistics for ease of interpretation. The material
(Median = $50, SD = 229.48) and experiential (Median = $225,
SD = 7362.75) purchases participants listed differed in (natural)
log-transformed price, t(91) = 4.54, p b 0.0001. We therefore
included purchase price as a covariate in the analysis below to
rule out any concern that our results are driven by differences in
the cost of participants' anticipated purchases.
As predicted, material and experiential purchases also differed
in terms of when participants would prefer to consume them, with
participants wanting to wait for better experiential purchases
(M = 1.29, SD = 2.48), but not to wait for better material
purchases (M = − 0.51, SD = 2.72), ß = 0.85 (SE = 0.29),
p b 0.01. Log-transformed price was not a significant predictor
of participants' preferred time of consumption, ß = 0.18 (SE =
0.16), p = 0.25. Moreover, the preference for the delayed option
was significantly higher than the midpoint in the experiential
purchase condition, one-sample t(47) = 3.62, p b 0.001, but the
mean response in the material condition did not differ from the
midpoint, t(47) = − 1.29, p = 0.20.
5
Experiment 3b
We contend that people's differential preferences for the
timing of material and experiential consumption are due to the
fact that waiting is more enjoyable for experiential purchases
(Kumar & Gilovich, in press; Kumar et al., 2014). To examine
whether this is the case, we conducted a conceptual replication of
Study 3a and added a measure of how much utility participants
said they got from anticipating the purchase in question. We then
examined whether people, as has been shown elsewhere (Kumar
et al., 2014), find the anticipation of experiential purchases more
pleasurable than the anticipation of material purchases, and
whether this difference mediates the tendency for people to want
to delay the purchase of experiences longer.
Method
Participants
Ninety-seven students and affiliates at Cornell university (57
female; Mage = 20.79, SD = 3.35) volunteered to participate.
Procedure
As in Study 3a, participants were given definitions of either
experiential or material purchases (between-subjects) and asked
to list a purchase in the given category they intended to make in
the near future. Participants were then told that “We get
enjoyment from our purchases for a variety of reasons—we
anticipate the happiness we are going to get from our
purchases, we enjoy them in the here-and-now, and we derive
happiness from our memories of them and from talking about
them with other people.” They were asked to focus on the
utility that comes from the anticipation phase. After reading a
brief statement that waiting can sometimes be pleasant and
sometimes be unpleasant, participants rated how much the
anticipation period took away from or added to their overall
enjoyment of the purchase that they had listed. They responded
on a scale from − 4 (Takes away from it a lot) to 4 (Adds to it a
lot), where the midpoint was labeled “Has no effect on my
enjoyment.” The procedure then followed that of Experiment 3a
exactly.
Results
Four participants did not report the cost of their purchase, but
did respond on all other measures. Again, participants reported a
similar variety of experiential and material purchases. And, like
in Study 3a, the distribution of the cost of these purchases was
skewed. We therefore once again conducted analyses using
natural log-transformed prices, but report untransformed descriptive statistics. This time, the experiential purchases participants
were planning to make (Median = $100, SD = 688.88) were
significantly more expensive than the material purchases
(Median = $40, SD = 224.81), t(91) = 2.91, p b 0.01. To account for this difference, we therefore again included price as a
covariate in the analyses below.
Conceptually replicating the findings of Kumar et al. (2014),
participants in Study 3b rated the anticipatory period as adding
Please cite this article as: Kumar, A., & Gilovich, T., To do or to have, now or later? The preferred consumption profiles of material and experiential purchases, Journal
of Consumer Psychology (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jcps.2015.06.013
6
A. Kumar, T. Gilovich / Journal of Consumer Psychology xx, x (2015) xxx–xxx
more to their of enjoyment of experiential purchases (M = 1.92,
SD = 1.48) than material purchases (M = 1.17, SD = 1.65), ß =
0.39 (SE = 0.16), p b 0.02. Purchase price was not a significant
predictor of how much anticipation added to participants' rated
enjoyment, ß = − 0.12, (SE = 0.08), p = 0.16. These results
indicate that although the period of anticipation is positive for both
experiential and material purchases (both means were significantly
above the midpoint, texperiential(48) = 9.05, p b 0.0001 and
tmaterial(47) = 4.89, p b 0.0001), it is significantly more positive
for experiences.
Directly replicating the results from the previous study,
participants reported wanting to wait for better experiential
purchases (M = 1.59, SD = 2.47), but not for better material
purchases (M = 0.25, SD = 2.82), ß = 0.63 (SE = 0.29), p =
0.03. Price did not significantly predict participants' interest in
delaying consumption, ß = 0.06 (SE = 0.15), p = 0.71. Also like
Study 3a, the preference for the delayed option was again
significantly higher than the midpoint in the experiential purchase
condition, one-sample t(48) = 4.52, p b 0.0001, but the mean
response in the material condition did not differ from the midpoint,
t(47) = 0.61, p N 0.5.
To examine whether the fact that waiting for an experience
is more pleasurable than waiting for a material good mediates
participants' inclination to wait to receive a better experience,
we regressed participants' intertemporal preferences onto
purchase condition and our measure of anticipatory utility and
found that condition was no longer a significant predictor of
purchase satisfaction, p N 0.06, while anticipatory utility did
predict intertemporal preference, ß = 0.45, p b 0.01 (see Fig. 1
for details). This mediational relationship was confirmed by a
bootstrapping analysis (bias-corrected; 10,000 samples), in
which the 95% CI on the indirect effect did not include zero
[0.05, 0.90]. In other words, participants were more willing to
wait for a better experiential purchase than for a better material
purchase, and this difference was due to the differences in the
anticipatory utility of these different types of purchases.
Experiment 3c
As noted earlier, there is some concern that the results in
Studies 3a and 3b may have been driven largely by the fact that
the material goods participants listed tend to endure over time and
thus have an open-ended consumption horizon. Participants
might want to enjoy them right away, knowing that they can
Fig 1. Relative to material purchases, experiential purchases provide more
anticipatory pleasure, which, in turn, increases preferences for delayed
consumption. Note: the beta weight in parentheses reflects the effect of type
of purchase when the mediator is included in the regression. **p ≤ .01 and
*p ≤ .05.
continue to enjoy them later. To address this issue, we conducted
a conceptual replication of Study 3a in which we held the
purchase constant and varied whether participants were led to
think of it in material or experiential terms. In past research, a
given purchase (a 3D TV, a boxed set of CDs) provided a greater
hedonic benefit when participants were led to think of it in
experiential rather than material terms (Carter & Gilovich, 2010,
2012; Rosenzweig & Gilovich, 2012). In this study, we examined
whether participants would be more inclined to delay their
consumption of a purchase when they were led to think about it in
experiential terms. We predicted that even a prototypically
experiential purchase (a vacation) is desired more immediately
when one highlights the material aspects of that purchase than
when one focuses on its experiential elements.
Method
Participants
One hundred U.S. participants (26 female; Mage = 31.29,
SD = 9.75) were recruited from Amazon's Mechanical Turk in
exchange for modest monetary compensation.
Procedure
Participants were asked to imagine they were planning a trip
to New York City. Those in the material condition were told,
“As you may know, New York City is one of the biggest
commercial centers in the world, and is a great place to buy lots
of new possessions to take home with you. For instance,
shoppers in New York often buy high-end clothing and
jewelry, trendy home furnishings, and the latest gadgets. Just
think of all of the things you could buy on your trip!”
Participants in the experiential condition were also asked to
imagine a trip to New York City, but were instead told, “As you
may know, New York City is one of the cities in the world with
the most to do, and is a great place to have lots of fun
experiences. For instance, travelers to New York often eat out
at delicious restaurants, take in a show at a Broadway theater or
one of the city's many live music venues, or go to some of the
country's most famous museums. Just think of all the things
you could do on your trip!”
As a manipulation check, we gave one of the two trip
descriptions to a separate sample of 88 people. After they read
the description, all participants were given definitions of both
experiential and material purchases, per Van Boven and Gilovich
(2003) and reproduced above. These participants were asked to rate
the trip described to them on a 9-point scale, where 1 represented
“Much more like a material purchase” and 9 represented “Much
more like an experiential purchase.” Testifying to the success of
the manipulation, participants given the experiential frame rated
the trip as more experiential (M = 7.40, SD = 1.50) than those
given the material frame (M = 4.79, SD = 2.55), unequal
variances t(67.30) = 5.82, p b 0.001, Cohen's d = 1.25. Note
also that the mean in the experiential condition was significantly
higher than the midpoint of the scale, t(44) = 10.74, p b 0.0001,
while the mean in the material condition did not differ from the
midpoint of the scale, t(42) = −0.54, p = 0.59.
Please cite this article as: Kumar, A., & Gilovich, T., To do or to have, now or later? The preferred consumption profiles of material and experiential purchases, Journal
of Consumer Psychology (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jcps.2015.06.013
A. Kumar, T. Gilovich / Journal of Consumer Psychology xx, x (2015) xxx–xxx
To rule out the possibility that a difference in the subjective
appeal of the experiential and material trips might have
artifactually produced the predicted effect, we also provided
one of the two descriptions of the trip to a separate sample of 82
Mechanical Turk workers. After reading either the material or
experiential description of the trip, they were asked how
appealing such a trip to New York sounded to them on a scale
from 1 (not at all appealing) to 9 (extremely appealing). The
vacation was not seen as more or less appealing in the
experiential (M = 6.85, SD = 2.16) and material (M = 6.93,
SD = 2.45) conditions, t(80) = 0.14, p = 0.89.
After reading one of these two descriptions of a trip to New
York City, the participants in Study 3c were given a scenario
like the one we provided participants in Studies 3a and 3b.
Specifically, they were told to imagine that 6 months from now,
they could get an “upgraded” version of this purchase. That is,
they were told to imagine that if they waited for six months, the
same amount of money would get them a much better trip. They
then indicated their (temporal) consumption preference using the
same scale as that used in Studies 3a and 3b.
Results
Participants were more inclined to wait for a trip to New
York City when it was construed in experiential (M = 2.94,
SD = 1.61) rather than material (M = 2.28, SD = 1.76) terms,
t(98) = 1.96, p = 0.05, Cohen's d = 0.39. Thus, even when
the same purchase (a vacation) is considered more experiential
than material in nature, people are more interested in delaying
its consumption.
Experiment 4
To further test the robustness of our central result, we
examined whether consumers are more inclined to have
now and do later in yet another paradigm. That is, we had
participants generate actual purchases from their own lives that
best fit either: (a) the type of purchase for which waiting was
pleasurable and they therefore delayed its consumption, or (b)
the type of purchase for which waiting was not pleasurable and
they therefore chose to consume it immediately. We then had
them rate the extent to which the purchase they made was either
material or experiential in nature. We predicted that participants
would tend to cite purchases that were more experiential
in nature when asked to recall a purchase they chose to delay
than when asked to recall a purchase they chose to consume
immediately.
Method
Participants
Ninety-four students at Cornell university (56 female; Mage =
20.68, SD = 3.11) participated in Study 4.
Procedure
Participants were randomly assigned to one of two purchase
conditions. Half the participants were told there are some
7
purchases that people want immediately, are impatient for,
can't wait to make, and would rather make sooner than later.
They were asked to generate the best exemplar of that type
purchase that they had made in the past five years. The other
half of the participants were told that there are some purchases
people prefer to delay making, would choose have at some
point in the future, and for which waiting can be exciting and
part of the fun. They were then asked to list the best exemplar
of that type of purchase they had made in the past five years.
After retrieving a specific purchase from the stated category,
participants in both conditions were provided with definitions
of experiential and material purchases (the same ones used in
the previous studies). They were then asked to rate the extent to
which their purchase was material or experiential on a 9-point
scale, where 1 represented “Much more like a material
purchase” and 9 represented “Much more like an experiential
purchase.”
Results
Participants tended to report purchases like iPhones and
footwear in the immediate condition, while they were more likely
to report purchases like vacations and tickets to shows in the
delayed condition. More specifically, when asked to recall a
purchase that they wanted to make immediately, participants listed
purchases they rated as more material (M = 3.70, SD = 2.85) than
when asked to recall a purchase they preferred to delay (M = 5.21,
SD = 3.17), t(92) = 2.43, p b 0.02, Cohen's d = 0.50. Thus, the
purchases that consumers actually choose to wait for in their
everyday lives are more experiential than those they choose to
consume more immediately.
It is worth noting that we conducted a conceptual replication
of Study 4 (N = 72) in which we did not have the participants
themselves rate how material or experiential the purchase that
they listed was, but instead had five coders who were unaware
of experimental condition rate the material or experiential
nature of the purchase in question. In this replication, we also
had participants provide the price of the purchase that they had
listed. This allowed us to rule out the possibility that our effects
were driven by the cost of purchases or by the fact that
participants were providing their own subjective ratings of how
material or experiential the purchase was (though we believe
that a rating from the participant himself or herself is more
telling than coders' ratings).
Coders were given the definitions of experiential and
material purchases described above and asked to rate the
purchases on the same 5-point scale used in Study 3 of Kumar
et al. (2014), where 1 represented “definitely material” and 5
represented “definitely experiential.” There was strong agreement among the coders (α N 0.9), and so their ratings were
averaged. The purchases reported by participants asked to recall
a purchase that they wanted to make as soon as possible were
rated as more material (M = 1.67, SD = 1.06) than those
retrieved by participants asked to recall a purchase that they
wanted to delay (M = 3.31, SD = 1.61), unequal variances
t(69.88) = 5.21, p b 0.0001, Cohen's d = 1.20. When logtransformed cost was analyzed, the purchases participants listed
Please cite this article as: Kumar, A., & Gilovich, T., To do or to have, now or later? The preferred consumption profiles of material and experiential purchases, Journal
of Consumer Psychology (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jcps.2015.06.013
8
A. Kumar, T. Gilovich / Journal of Consumer Psychology xx, x (2015) xxx–xxx
in the delayed condition (untransformed Median = $800, SD =
2650.46) tended to be more expensive than those listed
by participants in the immediate condition (untransformed
Median = $50, SD = 415.09), t(68) = 4.00, p b 0.001. But
these differences in price did not explain the difference in the
material or experiential nature of the purchase recalled. When
log-transformed purchase price was included as a covariate,
purchase condition still significantly predicted material/
experiential ratings, ß = 0.72 (SE = 0.20), p b 0.001, but
price did not, ß = 0.08 (SE = 0.10), p = 0.42.
General discussion
In a series of nine studies, we found that there is more utility
to be gained from delaying the consumption of experiential
purchases than delaying the consumption of material goods
and that people act accordingly. In Studies 1a through 1c,
participants who had to select which purchase, experiential or
material, to consume now and which to consume later exhibited
a marked preference for having now and doing later. In Study
2a, we examined a larger sample of purchases, and participants
indicated their optimal consumption time in a paradigm that
didn't require a forced choice. Here too, participants expressed
a desire to consume experiential purchases later in the future
than material purchases. In Study 2b, we found that this was
true even for experiential purchases that could be consumed
repeatedly. In Studies 3a through 3c, participants exhibited
more patience in intertemporal choice tasks when deciding
between an experience now and a superior experience later than
when deciding between a possession now and a better
possession later. We found in Study 3b that this effect is driven
by the tendency for the pre-consumption period to provide
more enjoyment for experiential purchases than it does for
material purchases. Finally, in Study 4, we showed that our
findings affect people's real-life purchasing decisions. When
participants were asked about which purchases from their own
lives they either couldn't wait for or had delayed in order
to savor, their delayed purchases were significantly more
experiential.
Our findings generalized across different sets of participants
(college undergraduates and a broader online sample from across
the U.S.) and a variety of different purchases (experiential
and material purchases provided by the experimenter in Studies
1a–2b, self-generated purchases that participants were intending
to make or had actually made in Studies 3a, 3b, and 4, and the
same purchase construed in material or experiential terms in
Study 3c). Moreover, experiential and material purchases were
matched on subjective appeal in Studies 1a, 2a, and 3c, and the
reported findings could not be attributed to differences in price in
all of the remaining studies.
An inherent difference between experiences and possessions is
that possessions are, well, kept in one's possession. This has
obvious relevance to the decision to consume now or later because
material purchases can be consumed now and later, whereas most
experiences must be consumed now or later. This certainly
contributes to the phenomenon we have explored in this paper,
influencing people's real-world decisions to opt for immediate
versus delayed consumption. Indeed, part of the reason people may
enjoy experiences so much, both in prospect and real-time, is that
they recognize that experiences, like apple blossoms, are
time-limited and therefore must be enjoyed before they are gone.
With material goods, in contrast, it can be easy to take their
physical longevity for granted, leading to a desire to consume
immediately under the assumption that the material good will
always be there to be used and enjoyed later on. That assumption is
often warranted, of course. But often the hoped-for downstream
consumption is diminished by deterioration, obsolescence, or
habituation (Frederick & Loewenstein, 1999).
As important as the greater longevity of material possessions
may be, it is not the sole reason why people are inclined to
consume their material goods immediately but delay the
consumption of their experiences. The results of Studies 1b,
1c, 2b and 3c make that clear. In Studies 1b and 2b, we found
that participants would still rather have a material good now
and an experiential purchase later even when the experience
was one that could be enjoyed both now and later. In Study 1c,
we found evidence that this preference also holds when the
material good is less enduring than is typically the case. In
Study 3c, we found that the same purchase elicited different
temporal consumption preferences when it was thought of in
material versus experiential terms.
Another purely pragmatic (and hence uninteresting) reason that
people may be more inclined to delay experiential than material
purchases is that it can be harder to fit many experiences into one's
schedule. A concert at the local auditorium takes place at a
particular time, but one can fiddle with his or her Smartphone in
any nook and cranny in the day. A vacation requires time off from
work; enjoying a new computer or new car does not. Although
such considerations can certainly impact the timing of many
purchases, they cannot account for many of our results, such as
those obtained in Studies 1b, 3a, 3b, 4, and especially 3c, where
participants preferred to speed up the consumption of the very
same purchase (a trip to New York City) when it was thought of in
terms of its material rather than its experiential nature. A trip to
New York would require the same amount of advance planning in
either condition, but when participants thought of it in more
material terms, they expressed less of an interest in delaying it.
Beyond these pragmatic considerations, why are people
more inclined to delay the consumption of experiences? We
contend that it's because waiting is simply a more pleasurable
state when it comes to anticipated experiential consumption
than anticipated material consumption, and we obtained
support for this account in Study 3b. People are often excited
while waiting to consume their experiential purchases, full of
pleasant revelries about what the experience will be like. The
waiting itself is pleasurable, and so people get a greater hedonic
benefit from their experiences when they delay consumption.
Indeed, it has been shown elsewhere that waiting for an
experiential purchase involves pleasant feelings of excitement,
whereas waiting for a material purchase involves somewhat
less pleasant feelings tinged with impatience (Kumar &
Gilovich, in press; Kumar et al., 2014). When it comes to
material goods, waiting is more often an aversive, frustrating,
anxiety-inducing experience. As a result, people are more likely
Please cite this article as: Kumar, A., & Gilovich, T., To do or to have, now or later? The preferred consumption profiles of material and experiential purchases, Journal
of Consumer Psychology (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jcps.2015.06.013
A. Kumar, T. Gilovich / Journal of Consumer Psychology xx, x (2015) xxx–xxx
to want their possessions now. The results of Study 3b make it
clear that people often opt to delay experiential consumption
because they anticipate that doing so will give them a pleasant
period of anticipation. Their decision to put off experiential
consumption, then, appears to be entirely rational.
This of course pushes the question a step back: Why is it that
waiting to enjoy an experience tends to be more pleasurable than
waiting to enjoy a material possession? We suspect that several
processes contribute to this effect and although empirically
evaluating the contribution of each of them is beyond the scope of
this paper, delineating them can help guide future research.
Kumar and Gilovich (in press) have recently shown that
experiential purchases are talked about more than material
purchases—even before the purchase has been made—and the
story utility people derive from doing so is likely to contribute to
the greater pleasure they get from waiting for an experiential
purchase than waiting for a material purchase. Also, to the extent
that people talk more about their upcoming experiential
purchases, even before they have been made, they may also be
more integrated—and integrated sooner—into the individual's
sense of identity (Carter & Gilovich, 2012). The feeling that a
given purchase is contributing to one's identity—that the self is
being enhanced—is likely to be inherently pleasurable. There
also tends to be more uncertainty surrounding impending
experiential purchases (Jampol & Gilovich, in preparation;
Mann & Gilovich, in preparation), and a degree of uncertainty
can leave more room for imagination to work its magic (Wilson,
Centerbar, Kermer, & Gilbert, 2005). Finally, the mental
simulation of future experiences may be more fluent (Alter &
Oppenheimer, 2009) or abstract (Trope & Liberman, 2003),
either of which would be likely to make the simulation more
pleasurable.
As important as it is to further elucidate the processes
responsible for the findings we have discussed here, so too is
studying these phenomena with a focus on actual choice rather
than expressed preference. Like much research in the judgment
and decision making and consumer behavior literatures, the
participants in our studies were not confronted with actual
choices but reported what decisions they would make under the
conditions stipulated. A reliance on hypothetical decisions can
be risky when the actual choice brings to bear elements that are
weak or absent when making a hypothetical decision. It can be
easy to say, for example, that one would rather eat a carrot than
a cookie; harder to actually choose the carrot when confronted
with the aroma of butter and warm chocolate. We don't believe
these differences were pronounced in the studies we report
here, and what we observed in participants' hypothetical
choices was validated by reports of their actual behavior. In
Study 4, participants reported actual occasions in which they
yearned to make and consume a purchase right away or
preferred to put off consumption until later and we found that
the former tended to involve material goods and the latter to
involve experiences.
Future research might take this a step further and have
participants make actual consumption decisions, both in controlled
laboratory settings and in real-world consumer environments.
Budget constraints make it a challenge to find suitable, non-trivial
9
experiences and possessions for participants to consume in the
lab, but previous research shows that it can be done (Carter &
Gilovich, 2010; Nicolao et al., 2009; Thompson, Hamilton, &
Rust, 2005). One possibility would be to select two items that can
be construed in either material or experiential terms—a boxed set
of music and a special edition DVD, for example, or a package of
Silly String and a Buddha Board—and, in a counterbalanced
design, have participants focus on one's material nature and on
the other's experiential nature. When given a choice to receive
one immediately and the other after a delay, would participants
elect to receive the material item right away but defer the
experience? Another approach would be to give participants gift
cards to commercial establishments where they could make either
experiential or material purchases (e.g., a store at the mall and the
movie theater). Researchers could then track the order in which
these gift cards were used.
It is worth noting that Study 3c is first experiment in the
literature on the hedonics of material and experiential consumption to frame a typically experiential purchase (a trip to New York
City) in material and experiential terms and examine its effect on
participants' preferences. Previous studies (Carter & Gilovich,
2010, 2012; Rosenzweig & Gilovich, 2012) have similarly taken
advantage of the fuzzy boundary between experiential and
material purchases by leading participants to construe prototypically material purchases (a CD box set, a 3D television) in
material or experiential terms. Further work on the framing of
purchases in material or experiential terms is likely to yield
additional insights. With this in mind, it is of particular interest
that although the overall pattern of results was the same in Studies
3a and 3b as it was in Study 3c, the descriptive statistics in these
studies differed in a potentially meaningful way. Participants in
Studies 3a and 3b were given explicit definitions of either
material or experiential purchases and asked to think of an
example of that type of purchase. In that case, participants in the
material condition were not inclined to delay consumption, but
those in the experiential condition were. In contrast, in Study 3c,
in which a prototypically experiential purchase (a vacation) was
framed in material or experiential terms, participants again
demonstrated a preference to delay the purchase more if it was
construed experientially. But they also indicated that they'd want
to delay consumption of the purchase if it was construed
materially as well—just not as much. This may be because of
the inherently experiential nature of the purchase in question.
Would the opposite pattern of results be obtained if participants
were led to think of a prototypical material good (e.g., a television,
a bicycle) in material or experiential terms?
Finally, it is worth considering whether the strength of these
effects varies with whether the purchase had been paid for in
advance or if the day of financial reckoning had yet to come.
We suspect that the benefits derived from the anticipation of
experiential purchases are even greater if they are paid for
beforehand, but consumed later. Dunn and Norton (2013) have
argued that people tend to get more enjoyment from pre-paid
consumption because it makes the consumption feel free. This
could apply to anticipation as well: perhaps waiting to consume
might also feel better if one has already paid for an experience.
This allows one to experience the joys of looking forward to an
Please cite this article as: Kumar, A., & Gilovich, T., To do or to have, now or later? The preferred consumption profiles of material and experiential purchases, Journal
of Consumer Psychology (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jcps.2015.06.013
10
A. Kumar, T. Gilovich / Journal of Consumer Psychology xx, x (2015) xxx–xxx
experiential purchase without the pain associated with still
having to pay for it. When consumption finally occurs, it is
possible to feel the satisfaction associated with the experience
at what feels like zero cost (Shafir & Thaler, 2006). Paying in
advance is likely to have benefits for both material and
experiential purchases, but it may be that these benefits are
even greater when it comes to experiential consumption. When
people have paid in advance, they can fully enjoy waiting for
their favorite teams' games or their highly-anticipated fun in
the sun, and they're likely to want to extend that wait for a
considerable period of time. Indeed, the findings we have
reported here provide some understanding of why we're often
so ready and willing to select the “expedited shipping” button
when ordering clothes and electronic gadgets, but take some
delight in making our restaurant reservations and buying
concert or theater tickets well in advance.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by a grant from the John
Templeton Foundation through the Greater Good Science
Center at the University of California, Berkeley awarded to
Thomas Gilovich, a gift to Cornell University from Lisa and
Dan Zelson, and a National Science Foundation Graduate
Research Fellowship awarded to Amit Kumar.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jcps.2015.06.013.
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Please cite this article as: Kumar, A., & Gilovich, T., To do or to have, now or later? The preferred consumption profiles of material and experiential purchases, Journal
of Consumer Psychology (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jcps.2015.06.013